Time can be counted in days, weeks, years. When cancer is incurable, announcing it to the patient is a necessity, with all the complexity of the vital prognosis and the evolution of science.
Margot Noblecourt, head of the oncology department at the Cholet hospital center (Maine-et-Loire), gives the framework of her practice.
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What happens when cancer is incurable?
Cancer can be incurable with a lot of time ahead of us, or with a very short time frame. The question will be the immediate threat, or not, to the vital prognosis. We have a duty of transparency towards our patients.
We take on this role which is not the easiest, but we must assume it because people sometimes have a few days or a few weeks to live, and they have things to do before they die.
Is this always clear from the start of treatment?
We sometimes have very unexpected trajectories. For example, relapses that we ourselves did not believe were possible, or illnesses that resist everything. Science is constantly advancing, with new developments every year.
We must make a patient understand that today, their chronic cancer is incurable but that, perhaps, in three or four years, that could change.
When do the treatments stop?
When we are at the end of our abilities or when the situation escapes us, stopping active therapies is a real announcement. It's complicated, because we have had time to create a relationship with the patient. People then ask the question “how much time do I have left?” “.
But there are so many variables, we can't read a crystal ball. We are not necessarily going to give a duration, because it is complicated to move forward on something that we are not certain of ourselves…
